I think another reason why our present era has failed to come up with its own unique vision of the future is the growing conservatism of the mainstream entertainment industry, which translates into reliance in established properties, or at least in established genres and conventions. In the 80s and 90s, movies like Blade Runner and The Matrix helped solidify cyberpunk as a staple of popular culture. Today they would have been deemed far too risky to produce by production comeanies without being couched on a preexisting property or popular genre, and I think that's why you don't really see their solarpunk or biopunk equivalents being made.
In an age of spin-offs, tie-ins and sequels, starting a full new genre is a lot harder than it was before
I read a piece arguing that Hollywood dropped the ball because they kept making movies about heroes with incredible levels of economic and physical power, and then showhorned women into the same stereotype. Korean storytelling emphasises internal states, emotion and relationships, and female viewers in particular find that gives them something Hollywood can't.
Kdramas do emphasize that all worthwhile men are tall suit-wearing CEOs, though, and the country is obsessed with physical appearance in a way that we aren’t, or at least will never admit to.
Is Hollywood really that much more conservative (risk averse) than it used to be?
I assumed that we have become accustomed to high film quality, but that the fracturing of the media landscape made the odds of a good ROI less favorable, and that was why we just had endless superhero movies and sequels/reboots.
I think I'd probably blame the fact that a high budget movie now costs a lot more than it used to more than the fracturing of the media landscape.
But regardless of the root cause, the result is unambiguous. Production companies play it a lot safer than they used to, at least at the level of big budget movies. They almost never take a risk on a fully new IP, and when they do it's because they know that very similar things were successful in the past...
fwiw / in case it's of any use, my personal answer to "what's next after cyberpunk" is something like "communion with like-minds far beyond our immediate social graph", which is a tedious way of saying, kinship with people we couldn't have met without technology. "the power of friendship!!" is an old clichéd trope, but with good reason, because it's eternally true and there are interesting new angles to it that emerge with the changing times
That's really interesting. I've found that the internet occasionally discovers new friends for me, but most of the interaction there so far is very attenuated...
"If there is one technology we have imagined reshaping the world, it’s artificial intelligence, which is improving by leaps and bounds."
I actually think your point is generally valid, but quite a bit of cyberpunk deals with AI.
Neuromancer, one of the seminal works of cyberpunk, is heavily about AI.
Of course there's also Bladerunner and while it's iconic for its visual design, the themes investigating life and the self through AI were integral.
I always preferred the world building of Shadowrun to Cyberpunk 2020 back in the day, even as a science fantasy I thought early on it had great cyberpunk world building, and there was a sterling Shadowrun campaign called Renraku Arcology Shutdown about a huge corporate arcology taken over by its intelligent system gone wrong.
And yeah of course cyberpunk has lots of AI (which btw I mention 😉). But robots are usually limited to combat drones; we don't see a lot of robots cleaning streets or serving food. Part of that is because ubiquitous robots tend to imply high standards of living for humans, like in The Jetsons - something cyberpunk tries to get away from...
I was thinking 2 things Shadowrun might hit better are
1) Centrality of identity politics and the Cambrian explosion in potential identities.
2) The characters think in more fantastical ways. Paranoia and conspiracy seems more baked into Shadowrun with a lot of weirdness . For example QAnon might exist in Cyberpunk but in Shadowrun it could be true! (Though only of course if Hilary Clinton is *actually* an ageless dragon) Because I think the Shadowrun world is weirder and less rational than Cyberpunk I think it captures something important.
Or put another way. If J6 happened in Cyberpunk it might be a nefarious political operation. If it happened in Shadowrun the Q Shaman would have been an actual Shaman trying to summon demonic powers to aid Donald Trump but only if he could access the Mystic power residing under the Capitol building!
When this story came out I tried using ChatGPT to write a story outline where robots do these things in response to this, but… I kind of burnt out trying to come with better ones and didn't get around to making this comment again until now. Anyways, it took many, many dozens of revisions to remove cliches as even when I explicitly told it things like "Without using or being augmented by AI, people are often not competitive, but these augmentations are very cheap and widely available, with pretty much anyone who wants access to them being able to access them." it would still shoehorn in outright contradictory statements saying that people could not access them somehow and such. So anyways, this is what we came up with while I tried to make the story elements ChatGPT came up with actually make sense, and while adding a few of my own elements into it (e.g, the AI came with the name "Alice", so obviously if I wrote in an encrypted connection the other person _had_ to be [named "Bob"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob)):
> In the not-too-distant future, AI has fully automated many tasks, resulting in a high standard of living and low costs for society. Solar and battery technologies have advanced, allowing for cheap and plentiful energy. Space exploration has also progressed, leading to the colonization of other planets.
>
> Transhumanist and bio-technology, including mental augmentations based on artificial neural networks, have become widespread. People who have modified themselves to become real-life furries are now a common sight.
>
> The main character, Alice, lives in an authoritarian country where augmentations are illegal. She refuses to accept the low standards of living and lack of opportunities in her country and seeks out a better life. She turns to a group of smugglers who offer to bring her illegal AI augmentations from abroad.
>
> After undergoing the illegal modifications, Alice becomes highly skilled and is able to secure a high paying job abroad through an encrypted chat connection with a contact named Bob. However, she must constantly worry about being caught by the authoritarian government and facing discrimination from those who suspect her of being an augmented "fake" human.
>
> As Alice and Bob discuss their illegal activities over the chat platform, they are unaware that the platform has been backdoored by the government representative Grace. When Alice is caught by Eve, a government operative, she must escape the country and flee to a society where AI augmentations are legal and widely accepted.
>
> Alice struggles to adapt to her new life in a society that is very different from the authoritarian one she came from. She faces discrimination and social isolation, but eventually learns to navigate her new life and find acceptance in her new community.
>
> As Alice looks back on her journey from a poor, oppressed citizen in an authoritarian country to a successful, augmented individual in a society that accepts and even embraces transhumanism, she realizes the true value of freedom and the power of technology to improve people's lives. She is grateful for the opportunities she has been given and the friends she has made, and is determined to continue fighting for the rights of those who are still oppressed and denied access to the benefits of AI and transhumanism.
You just laid it out to beautifully! Can’t believe I missed all the signals to see this myself. I think one piece to it to consider is the quasi-nihilism. The part of the pandemic and dread arising from fascism is the collective mental sense of pessimism and hopelessness even among the middle class. The reasoning behind the prevalence of insane conspiracy theories and the religious attachments to those conspiracies are also a foundational piece of the cyberpunk heuristic. So muvh to think about now (and a good opportunity to rewatch the Blade Runners!)
In Gibson's cyberpunk books it wasn't all neon and rainy streets. The bars and restaurants and Hiltons the characters hung around didn't necessarily look futuristic. Most of it looks a lot like our world.
The Cyberpunk game and anime miss this a little -- everything looks too metal and futuristic -- although it's justified because Night City is supposed to have been a planned city
Yes, everything about it is amazing except the writing seems weak (where it deviates from Gibson, which is a fair amount). Same problem as most genre TV nowadays. Still good.
The day after Thanksgiving, a neighbor ordered McDonalds from DoorDash (or one of those) and the deliveryman, all punked out in composites, leather, and antennae on a motorcycle, pushed up his sci fi sunshades and gave me the most sorrowful look as he walked up to their porch.
"Biotech, too, is generally believed to be in a revolutionary phase. But other than the kind of biomechanical implants that are a staple of cyberpunk sci-fi, I don’t see many visions of a future where the ability to modify our own bodies, brains, and genetic codes leads to a transformed world."
I have to strongly disagree with that statement. With the cost of CRISPR coming down dramatically AND the advancement in AI, the possibilities of biotech changing the future are endless.
(But maybe I'm biased through my background in medical engineering)
The A16Z podcast “bio eats world” is a great starting point to see the future through the eyes of biology.
I think there’s actually a reasonable amount of this, with authors exploring how people change themselves with biological mastery. Names that pop to mind (while at a kids bday party so not really focusing) include John Scalzi, Neal Asher, and Ian Banks. Latter two also big on future of largely altruistic AI-human collaboration.
Noah! So good! I sometimes feel like you are the alternative timeline of my life. We read the same books. Watch the same movies. And, I came this close to pursuing macro. I took Econ 101 with Lael Brainard. It was just intimidating enough to make me a psych major!
Just listening to your podcast there with Chris Johns. I heard the segment about rabbits and I thought I’d see if she’d entertain the idea instead of a dog/cat. She Ruthlessly shut the conversation down. Any way you can chat to her for me!
I don’t know, I’m a millennial living in the big city and I don’t recognize this as my world. I do see that it’s available as a lifestyle some may choose, but it all seems too dystopian to me and you would probably run as fast as you can when you grow a bit older. The physical world still exists, and real human interaction is not going away. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what Cyberpunk is though. Will check out the show, seems fun.
Boomer ballast is a big culprit here, IMO. I don't remember anyone who was really into a cyberpunk future when I was a kid, but I do remember a blithe techno-utopianism conveyed in a global village coffeehouse/alegria design style and through the aesthetics of early Microsoft and Apple products, including Encarta. Tech's promise seemed to be that it would bring back the aesthetics and culture of personal liberation from the 60s-70s counterculture and the advancing technology of the 50s-60s jet age (think jet travel, nuclear power, hell, The Jetsons itself) and marry them in the form of the PC. To Baby Boomers who remembered those from their childhood/adolescence but who were adults in the 80s to early 2000s, when greed was good, the religious right was ascendant and stifling, and "technological advancement" meant that TVs got bigger and cheaper every year, personal computing must have seemed like a bright beacon of hope. The apolitical-ness also makes sense when you consider that the Cold War had just ended and many Boomers were affluent enough to feel like they didn't have to care much about politics.
Now it's the end of 2022 and Boomers are still the most affluent and politically influential generation in the country. It's hard for young people to articulate a vision of the future when they don't have the money or power to implement it. Most of the peers I talk to would like one like Alfred Twu's, but they may not be representative. Going forward, I think the passing of the Boomers and the changes that it will bring to the Millennial generation (mainly that some members of it will inherit a lot and be newly affluent) is going to be a big wild card.
I predict that the Koch-led corporate hegemony that has captured the Republican party will create a Western surveillance state to compete with China, using many of the same techniques the Chinese do. That is part of their agenda from having captured the US Supreme Court.
There is already massive private surveillance through the collection of data about clicks, purchases, from gadgets, etc. I predict that this Supreme court will protect private surveillance rights over personal privacy rights.
The next step would be for the routine use of that private surveillance to work around legal limits for government surveillance (that needs court orders to be used in trials) through sale of private surveillance data to law enforcement agencies. This is already happening. I predict that this Supreme court will protect use of private surveillance data sold to government without need for court orders.
The next step would be the extensive privatization of detection of lawbreaking through private surveillance, facial recognition and AI with a bounty, just as we already have payoffs for reporting tax fraud. The idea is to move another step towards private enforcement of law, just as we already have private prisons. The Texas law allowing lawsuits for people involved in abortion is similar in kind. I predict that this Supreme court will support this change.
The European Union is well ahead in preventing such problems through its privacy law. The USA has no such safeguards.
So there are three predictions. They should probably be tightened up a bit to enable betting and clear judgement whether they come to pass.
I am still dreaming of a post scarcity future like Star Trek or Iain M. Banks' Culture series. It's not even that hard to see it coming together if solar, AI and space travel all reach their emerging possibilities.
It's also not hard to see dystopian world with the ice caps melting, sea levels rising, hundreds of millions and maybe even billions displaced, with wars, famines and population loss. A sort of forced degrowth if you will.
But I need to keep hope alive that we will find a way to muddle through the next century with our society more or less intact. I worked at Wired and HotWired in the mid 90s and still read Wired for its bright and hopeful vision. My 16 year old daughter, who is punk and hip and is a theatre kid at an art school, says that working at Wired was the coolest thing I ever did. She reads Wired too.
The "real world" in season 3 of WestWorld had an interesting take on a more modern style of cyberpunk. Not aggressively dystopian, but a human dealing with a world run by indifferent algorithms where he didn't have much of a place. (Before it got wrapped up in more boring action plots). I think that's a way you could evolve cyberpunk to be more interesting, not malevolent megacorps but quasi benevolent but indifferent systems that people have to live within. Post scarcity societies where you have everything except agency
I still think the 2013 movie Her is an interesting branch in this set of artistic visions. It's an AI future, but where the AIs are our friends and lovers. It's a futuristic Los Angeles where you take the subway to the sea, and the high speed rail to Tahoe, and pedestrianize around everywhere in between, while living in a spacious apartment in a skyscraper, with ample natural light and warm wood textures everywhere. Even though it's a future of AIs, the humans very rarely stare at screens, and instead mostly have conversations with their computers. Even when playing a video game it's a 3d immersive simulation, and it's only when he's composing text that he looks at a screen (but he still does it with voice control rather than a keyboard).
I think another reason why our present era has failed to come up with its own unique vision of the future is the growing conservatism of the mainstream entertainment industry, which translates into reliance in established properties, or at least in established genres and conventions. In the 80s and 90s, movies like Blade Runner and The Matrix helped solidify cyberpunk as a staple of popular culture. Today they would have been deemed far too risky to produce by production comeanies without being couched on a preexisting property or popular genre, and I think that's why you don't really see their solarpunk or biopunk equivalents being made.
In an age of spin-offs, tie-ins and sequels, starting a full new genre is a lot harder than it was before
That's a good point
I read a piece arguing that Hollywood dropped the ball because they kept making movies about heroes with incredible levels of economic and physical power, and then showhorned women into the same stereotype. Korean storytelling emphasises internal states, emotion and relationships, and female viewers in particular find that gives them something Hollywood can't.
Kdramas do emphasize that all worthwhile men are tall suit-wearing CEOs, though, and the country is obsessed with physical appearance in a way that we aren’t, or at least will never admit to.
Is Hollywood really that much more conservative (risk averse) than it used to be?
I assumed that we have become accustomed to high film quality, but that the fracturing of the media landscape made the odds of a good ROI less favorable, and that was why we just had endless superhero movies and sequels/reboots.
I think I'd probably blame the fact that a high budget movie now costs a lot more than it used to more than the fracturing of the media landscape.
But regardless of the root cause, the result is unambiguous. Production companies play it a lot safer than they used to, at least at the level of big budget movies. They almost never take a risk on a fully new IP, and when they do it's because they know that very similar things were successful in the past...
Yeah it’s a good question. A lot of these Hollywood stars are actually very good actors. I wish they made more low budget art films!
fwiw / in case it's of any use, my personal answer to "what's next after cyberpunk" is something like "communion with like-minds far beyond our immediate social graph", which is a tedious way of saying, kinship with people we couldn't have met without technology. "the power of friendship!!" is an old clichéd trope, but with good reason, because it's eternally true and there are interesting new angles to it that emerge with the changing times
That's really interesting. I've found that the internet occasionally discovers new friends for me, but most of the interaction there so far is very attenuated...
"If there is one technology we have imagined reshaping the world, it’s artificial intelligence, which is improving by leaps and bounds."
I actually think your point is generally valid, but quite a bit of cyberpunk deals with AI.
Neuromancer, one of the seminal works of cyberpunk, is heavily about AI.
Of course there's also Bladerunner and while it's iconic for its visual design, the themes investigating life and the self through AI were integral.
I always preferred the world building of Shadowrun to Cyberpunk 2020 back in the day, even as a science fantasy I thought early on it had great cyberpunk world building, and there was a sterling Shadowrun campaign called Renraku Arcology Shutdown about a huge corporate arcology taken over by its intelligent system gone wrong.
Yeah Shadowrun is great.
And yeah of course cyberpunk has lots of AI (which btw I mention 😉). But robots are usually limited to combat drones; we don't see a lot of robots cleaning streets or serving food. Part of that is because ubiquitous robots tend to imply high standards of living for humans, like in The Jetsons - something cyberpunk tries to get away from...
I was thinking 2 things Shadowrun might hit better are
1) Centrality of identity politics and the Cambrian explosion in potential identities.
2) The characters think in more fantastical ways. Paranoia and conspiracy seems more baked into Shadowrun with a lot of weirdness . For example QAnon might exist in Cyberpunk but in Shadowrun it could be true! (Though only of course if Hilary Clinton is *actually* an ageless dragon) Because I think the Shadowrun world is weirder and less rational than Cyberpunk I think it captures something important.
Or put another way. If J6 happened in Cyberpunk it might be a nefarious political operation. If it happened in Shadowrun the Q Shaman would have been an actual Shaman trying to summon demonic powers to aid Donald Trump but only if he could access the Mystic power residing under the Capitol building!
When this story came out I tried using ChatGPT to write a story outline where robots do these things in response to this, but… I kind of burnt out trying to come with better ones and didn't get around to making this comment again until now. Anyways, it took many, many dozens of revisions to remove cliches as even when I explicitly told it things like "Without using or being augmented by AI, people are often not competitive, but these augmentations are very cheap and widely available, with pretty much anyone who wants access to them being able to access them." it would still shoehorn in outright contradictory statements saying that people could not access them somehow and such. So anyways, this is what we came up with while I tried to make the story elements ChatGPT came up with actually make sense, and while adding a few of my own elements into it (e.g, the AI came with the name "Alice", so obviously if I wrote in an encrypted connection the other person _had_ to be [named "Bob"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob)):
> In the not-too-distant future, AI has fully automated many tasks, resulting in a high standard of living and low costs for society. Solar and battery technologies have advanced, allowing for cheap and plentiful energy. Space exploration has also progressed, leading to the colonization of other planets.
>
> Transhumanist and bio-technology, including mental augmentations based on artificial neural networks, have become widespread. People who have modified themselves to become real-life furries are now a common sight.
>
> The main character, Alice, lives in an authoritarian country where augmentations are illegal. She refuses to accept the low standards of living and lack of opportunities in her country and seeks out a better life. She turns to a group of smugglers who offer to bring her illegal AI augmentations from abroad.
>
> After undergoing the illegal modifications, Alice becomes highly skilled and is able to secure a high paying job abroad through an encrypted chat connection with a contact named Bob. However, she must constantly worry about being caught by the authoritarian government and facing discrimination from those who suspect her of being an augmented "fake" human.
>
> As Alice and Bob discuss their illegal activities over the chat platform, they are unaware that the platform has been backdoored by the government representative Grace. When Alice is caught by Eve, a government operative, she must escape the country and flee to a society where AI augmentations are legal and widely accepted.
>
> Alice struggles to adapt to her new life in a society that is very different from the authoritarian one she came from. She faces discrimination and social isolation, but eventually learns to navigate her new life and find acceptance in her new community.
>
> As Alice looks back on her journey from a poor, oppressed citizen in an authoritarian country to a successful, augmented individual in a society that accepts and even embraces transhumanism, she realizes the true value of freedom and the power of technology to improve people's lives. She is grateful for the opportunities she has been given and the friends she has made, and is determined to continue fighting for the rights of those who are still oppressed and denied access to the benefits of AI and transhumanism.
You just laid it out to beautifully! Can’t believe I missed all the signals to see this myself. I think one piece to it to consider is the quasi-nihilism. The part of the pandemic and dread arising from fascism is the collective mental sense of pessimism and hopelessness even among the middle class. The reasoning behind the prevalence of insane conspiracy theories and the religious attachments to those conspiracies are also a foundational piece of the cyberpunk heuristic. So muvh to think about now (and a good opportunity to rewatch the Blade Runners!)
In Gibson's cyberpunk books it wasn't all neon and rainy streets. The bars and restaurants and Hiltons the characters hung around didn't necessarily look futuristic. Most of it looks a lot like our world.
The Cyberpunk game and anime miss this a little -- everything looks too metal and futuristic -- although it's justified because Night City is supposed to have been a planned city
True. Have you watched The Peripheral?
Yes, everything about it is amazing except the writing seems weak (where it deviates from Gibson, which is a fair amount). Same problem as most genre TV nowadays. Still good.
The day after Thanksgiving, a neighbor ordered McDonalds from DoorDash (or one of those) and the deliveryman, all punked out in composites, leather, and antennae on a motorcycle, pushed up his sci fi sunshades and gave me the most sorrowful look as he walked up to their porch.
Wish I could have seen that
He probably had missed payments on the Deliverator.
"Biotech, too, is generally believed to be in a revolutionary phase. But other than the kind of biomechanical implants that are a staple of cyberpunk sci-fi, I don’t see many visions of a future where the ability to modify our own bodies, brains, and genetic codes leads to a transformed world."
I have to strongly disagree with that statement. With the cost of CRISPR coming down dramatically AND the advancement in AI, the possibilities of biotech changing the future are endless.
(But maybe I'm biased through my background in medical engineering)
The A16Z podcast “bio eats world” is a great starting point to see the future through the eyes of biology.
https://bio-eats-world.simplecast.com/
Oh of course I agree. I'm talking about the deficit of sci-fi that focuses on this! 😀
I think there’s actually a reasonable amount of this, with authors exploring how people change themselves with biological mastery. Names that pop to mind (while at a kids bday party so not really focusing) include John Scalzi, Neal Asher, and Ian Banks. Latter two also big on future of largely altruistic AI-human collaboration.
Noah! So good! I sometimes feel like you are the alternative timeline of my life. We read the same books. Watch the same movies. And, I came this close to pursuing macro. I took Econ 101 with Lael Brainard. It was just intimidating enough to make me a psych major!
Pretty cool!
Just listening to your podcast there with Chris Johns. I heard the segment about rabbits and I thought I’d see if she’d entertain the idea instead of a dog/cat. She Ruthlessly shut the conversation down. Any way you can chat to her for me!
I don’t know, I’m a millennial living in the big city and I don’t recognize this as my world. I do see that it’s available as a lifestyle some may choose, but it all seems too dystopian to me and you would probably run as fast as you can when you grow a bit older. The physical world still exists, and real human interaction is not going away. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what Cyberpunk is though. Will check out the show, seems fun.
Boomer ballast is a big culprit here, IMO. I don't remember anyone who was really into a cyberpunk future when I was a kid, but I do remember a blithe techno-utopianism conveyed in a global village coffeehouse/alegria design style and through the aesthetics of early Microsoft and Apple products, including Encarta. Tech's promise seemed to be that it would bring back the aesthetics and culture of personal liberation from the 60s-70s counterculture and the advancing technology of the 50s-60s jet age (think jet travel, nuclear power, hell, The Jetsons itself) and marry them in the form of the PC. To Baby Boomers who remembered those from their childhood/adolescence but who were adults in the 80s to early 2000s, when greed was good, the religious right was ascendant and stifling, and "technological advancement" meant that TVs got bigger and cheaper every year, personal computing must have seemed like a bright beacon of hope. The apolitical-ness also makes sense when you consider that the Cold War had just ended and many Boomers were affluent enough to feel like they didn't have to care much about politics.
Now it's the end of 2022 and Boomers are still the most affluent and politically influential generation in the country. It's hard for young people to articulate a vision of the future when they don't have the money or power to implement it. Most of the peers I talk to would like one like Alfred Twu's, but they may not be representative. Going forward, I think the passing of the Boomers and the changes that it will bring to the Millennial generation (mainly that some members of it will inherit a lot and be newly affluent) is going to be a big wild card.
As a boomer, I often feel that we are the pig in the python.
Amazingly well said, and I agree with every part of it.
Also nice to hear and see people talking about Cyberpunk more openly nowadays!
I predict that the Koch-led corporate hegemony that has captured the Republican party will create a Western surveillance state to compete with China, using many of the same techniques the Chinese do. That is part of their agenda from having captured the US Supreme Court.
How can we make a bet on this? 🙂
We'd need to better define it.
There is already massive private surveillance through the collection of data about clicks, purchases, from gadgets, etc. I predict that this Supreme court will protect private surveillance rights over personal privacy rights.
The next step would be for the routine use of that private surveillance to work around legal limits for government surveillance (that needs court orders to be used in trials) through sale of private surveillance data to law enforcement agencies. This is already happening. I predict that this Supreme court will protect use of private surveillance data sold to government without need for court orders.
The next step would be the extensive privatization of detection of lawbreaking through private surveillance, facial recognition and AI with a bounty, just as we already have payoffs for reporting tax fraud. The idea is to move another step towards private enforcement of law, just as we already have private prisons. The Texas law allowing lawsuits for people involved in abortion is similar in kind. I predict that this Supreme court will support this change.
The European Union is well ahead in preventing such problems through its privacy law. The USA has no such safeguards.
So there are three predictions. They should probably be tightened up a bit to enable betting and clear judgement whether they come to pass.
You can't. The Republicans will outlaw reporting on the surveillance state.
I am still dreaming of a post scarcity future like Star Trek or Iain M. Banks' Culture series. It's not even that hard to see it coming together if solar, AI and space travel all reach their emerging possibilities.
It's also not hard to see dystopian world with the ice caps melting, sea levels rising, hundreds of millions and maybe even billions displaced, with wars, famines and population loss. A sort of forced degrowth if you will.
But I need to keep hope alive that we will find a way to muddle through the next century with our society more or less intact. I worked at Wired and HotWired in the mid 90s and still read Wired for its bright and hopeful vision. My 16 year old daughter, who is punk and hip and is a theatre kid at an art school, says that working at Wired was the coolest thing I ever did. She reads Wired too.
The "real world" in season 3 of WestWorld had an interesting take on a more modern style of cyberpunk. Not aggressively dystopian, but a human dealing with a world run by indifferent algorithms where he didn't have much of a place. (Before it got wrapped up in more boring action plots). I think that's a way you could evolve cyberpunk to be more interesting, not malevolent megacorps but quasi benevolent but indifferent systems that people have to live within. Post scarcity societies where you have everything except agency
That’s the thing that animates Andrew Yang style fears of automation. Fear of losing agency and purpose.
I still think the 2013 movie Her is an interesting branch in this set of artistic visions. It's an AI future, but where the AIs are our friends and lovers. It's a futuristic Los Angeles where you take the subway to the sea, and the high speed rail to Tahoe, and pedestrianize around everywhere in between, while living in a spacious apartment in a skyscraper, with ample natural light and warm wood textures everywhere. Even though it's a future of AIs, the humans very rarely stare at screens, and instead mostly have conversations with their computers. Even when playing a video game it's a 3d immersive simulation, and it's only when he's composing text that he looks at a screen (but he still does it with voice control rather than a keyboard).